


What the world would call beautiful

by RockPaperbackScissors



Series: Thane x Shepard [10]
Category: Mass Effect
Genre: Angst and Humor, Destroy Ending, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Mother-Daughter Relationship, Spacer (Mass Effect), Thane Lives AU just because I can
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-19
Updated: 2017-01-19
Packaged: 2018-09-18 12:58:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,120
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9386324
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RockPaperbackScissors/pseuds/RockPaperbackScissors
Summary: After destruction of the Reapers, Commander Shepard is hospitalized and Hannah Shepard struggles to understand the world that her daughter has been living in.





	

I miss the days when I knew all my daughter’s friends by name. 

I can still picture them in the bright white light of the _SSV Copenhagen’s_ rec room, playing with stuffed animals and model ships: Meryl with her serious eyes, Rhea with her crown of copper curls, and fine-boned Lydia, who was always dancing. Of course, I lost touch with them as soon as my daughter did. I don’t know where they are now, or even if they’re alive.

Alive. I pull my mind back to the one fact that matters: my daughter is alive. She’s here at the hospital, down a corridor and behind a door, fenced off until she’s well enough for visitors. She’s closer than she has been in years. Does it matter that I don’t fit in among the people that she spent those years with? No. And yet, I can’t help but wish that things were different.

There’s the towering Turian in blue warpaint who paces the waiting room like a restless guard. There’s the violently green Drell who snapped out of his reverie long enough to introduce himself as her husband, register the shock on my face, and clumsily apologize before receding back into his thoughts. There’s the young Krogan who gawked in disbelief upon learning who I was. “Shepard doesn’t have a mom!” he’d guffawed before a woman had pulled him aside to explain that, yes, Shepard does indeed have a mother, and had once been a child, because springing full-grown out of a tank is the exception rather than the norm. 

That woman… I like her, and I envy her. She’s the only one of us who’s been allowed in, because she’s the only one who has anything useful to offer. The doctors have long conversations with her, hushed but rapid, punctuated by diagrams that shoot out of their omnitools: a grid bisected by a jagged line, a heart laced with tiny lights, a slowly rotating chunk of bone. Are those pieces of my daughter, I wonder? I suppose they must be. Just one more way in which other people know her better than I do. 

Today, I’ve decided to speak to that woman. I’ve come equipped with a cup of black tea in each hand, and I’ve positioned myself near the chair where she usually sits. As she emerges from the decontamination chamber and yanks off the crinkled surgical gown, I take a careful look at her face. She’s what the world would call beautiful - a dainty chin under full, pink lips, and eyebrows that begin and end in exactly the right places. But that’s not what stands out to me. She has that hard, weary look of a young woman who’s withstood more than her share, and built up a polished hide because of it. Scalding water in a porcelain teapot. 

As she slumps into her usual seat, I plop myself down beside her with what I hope is a friendly smile. “I’m Hannah. Commander Shepard's mother.”

“I know that.” She unfastens her sensible bun, sending black locks tumbling around her face. Her eyes are bloodshot, and her gaze droops towards the floor. “I mean… I’m Miranda. I helped Shepard, for a while.”

“You’re still helping, it seems.”

She gives the smallest of shrugs. “I’m acquainted with her medical history. They find me useful.”

“You’re a doctor, I take it?” I offer her the cup of tea that I’ve been clutching in my right hand. She doesn’t seem to notice. Does she even like tea, I wonder? Perhaps I’m just assuming that she likes everything that my daughter likes. Or used to like. Who am I to know what anyone likes nowadays?

Her back grows a little straighter, and for the first time she looks me in the eye.“I’ve had all the training of an MD-PhD, and then some.” Ah, there it is: that ancestral chant of _I’ve earned the right to be here and I dare you to say otherwise_.

I’ve been on the other side of this conversation enough times to know that I don’t _want_ to say otherwise. 

“Tea?” I wave the cup a little, which catches her attention. She frowns, as though my proffering hand is an exotic tentacle. 

“Y—yes. Thank you.”

“Good! My daughter _loved_ tea, you know, especially when she was a little girl. She always wanted whatever was in my cup. I’d give her some, but only after diluting it. I didn’t want her hooked on caffeine too early.” I scratch my head. Commander Shepard, savior of the galaxy, hero to all species, former disenfranchised toddler. “A bit of a foolish thing to worry about, looking back.”

“Shepard actually has a remarkably low dependence on caffeine,” she says in the same clinical voice that I’ve heard her use with the doctors. “I mean — that was very responsible of you. You must have been an excellent mother to her.” 

I laugh. “Well, I’ll bet that your mother did a fine job by you as well, and you’ll do a fine job by your children if you ever choose to have any.”

It’s as though her shell cracks, but is smoothed over before anything more than a breath escapes out of her. “I’m not—she isn’t—my parents are dead. Long dead.”

“Oh. I’m so sorry.” Put my foot right in it. _It,_ whatever it is, is evidently more complicated than I thought. 

“Don’t be.” She stands, and thrusts the untasted cup of tea back at me. “I should go.”

“Wait. Miranda.” I stand as well, but I still have to tilt my head upwards to see her face. “I don’t know half of what’s going on, and I know even less of what’s happened in the past. But I’m fairly confident that I should thank you for everything you’re doing and everything you’ve done.” It sounds like something you’d recite while offering a medal of honor; instead, I’m just taking back that lukewarm little cup. I can see the krogan gawking at me again. Clearly, _his_ parents, wherever they are, never taught him any manners. 

“It’s nothing to thank me for,” Miranda whispers. Those violet-gray eyes are a little glossier than they were a moment ago. “You and me both. We’re here because we couldn’t stand to be anywhere else. It’s just what you do when—when you’ve held someone’s life in your hands, and now they need to hold on to it themselves.”

Shivering, she walks off.

Well.

What unfathomable worlds my daughter must have passed through to reach this place. I suppose I should be glad that she had these equally unfathomable people to help her. Unfathomable, but kind. 

Perhaps that krogan would care for a cup of tea.


End file.
